[Music] Hello everyone and Welcome to another episode of Selling Greenville your favorite real estate podcast here in the upstate of South Carolina I'm your host Stan McCune as always realtor right here in the greater Greenville area and you can find all of my contact information in the show notes should you need to reach out to me for any reason and just a reminder as always please go ahead and subscribe to to the show so you don't miss any future episodes leave a fstar rating if you love the show or if you benefit from it in some way and I'd appreciate if you could also just leave me a short little review just something positive about the show that would be great to get it out to as many people as possible today we're going to be talking about the the market and we do this frequently because really every month the greater Greenville Association Realtors comes out with their Market stats and because of how fluid the market is I guess is is probably the best way of saying it and Ever Changing ever evolving doing a show usually per month I do a show that's kind of centered around these GG Market stats now as always I have to preface it that there are a few stats on here that for whatever reason tend to be inaccurate per month if that is the case then I will let you know before I mentioned the stat but but I've been doing this so long now that I pretty much just leave those off and what we do what I do is I will reference two months prior so let me give an example here I'm recording this in the middle of May the stats just came out for April some of the April stats will be wrong but then the stats that were wrong last month for the month of March will have been updated so there are some stats on here that will be more interesting for the month of March than for the month of April from the standpoint of of giving us an idea of where the market is going but unfortunately for some reason there are just a couple of stats on here that the Greenville Association of Realtors is just unable to get right in real time and I'm not exactly sure what the reason is for that I've never been able to get a firm answer on that but we're just going to start basically at the top here with new listings new listings believe it or not for a a a good chunk of the past 12 months have actually been up year on year we've been talking about the inventory issues that we have in Greenville and and really it's a nationwide problem but the inventory issues are not indicative of the fact that we're we're not seeing increases year on year we actually are seeing generally speaking some increases year on-ear now December M of 2021 January of this year and February of this year we're all down year on-ear so those were not good months from an inventory standpoint but now we've had two straight months March which was up 1 and a half% and April which is up 2.1% of new listings coming up year onye versus well year on year versus what we saw last year so that's good that's what we need we need more listings coming on the market to help rebalance some things as far as pending sales are concerned this is one of the statistics that is not going to be right for the month of April so I'm not even going to talk about the month of April what I'm going to talk about is the trend that we have seen since December which is that each month since December pending sales have been down year on year so there are fewer properties going under contract year on-ear a lot of that has to do with the inventory issues the month of March it was dramatically down then this is the the biggest down month that we've had and it'll be interesting to see once we get the actual numbers for April what April ends up being but the month of March was the first double digigit negative month and new listings that we've had the past 12 months it it so December it was down 4.3% year on-year again these are pending sales properties going under contract January it was down 3. . 7% year on-ear February down 6% year onye March down 13.3% year on-ear so that is a big big drop off in terms of of pending sales so what that's indicating to me again this is what we've been talking about is that we are seeing some changes in the market right now that to me is a is a big indicator March for pending sales to go down that much that means the the market people people were putting the pause down that you know pressing the pause button trying to to recalibrate okay what's going on here with mortgage rates what's going on here with the war in Ukraine what's going on here with hyperinflation all these different things happening people you know I I think we're we're seeing the market kind of take a pause because that's you know up until that point right December January February all those months being down that was a direct tie to the fact that there's just low inventory the re if you have fewer homes for sale then obviously your pending sales are going to be less there are fewer homes to put under contract but for to have jumped from where had it had been hovering between 3 and 6% down since December to jump up to 13.3% that tells me that's a little bit more I think than just the inventory and particularly because we have seen new listings coming on the market have ticked up right so we shouldn't be seeing such a dramatic decrease in pending sales I think that that indicates that some demand is is starting to lessen a little bit in in the market that being said closed sales for the month of March were up 1.4% but for the month of April and again same this is GNA be tied right if pending sales were down in March then closed sales are going to be down in April that is just naturally what's going to happen it was down 5.3% that's the first down month that we've had year onye since October of 2021 now October is traditionally a down month so that's not a a really a huge surprise but that's just something it's something to to keep in mind now I will say this is a interesting tidb I didn't realize this until I was looking at these numbers closed sales in April they spike in the month of March right so that is the month of March is when we kind of kick off the spring season and that's when we when people kind of wake up from you know the winter L and we see a every year a huge jump every healthy year a huge jump in Clos sales in the month of March but you know what traditionally actually the month of April does see a little bit bit of a tail off and then it goes up May and June with traditionally June being the peak of the of the buying season may can sometimes also be the peak of the buying season so we're entering the the peak and I shouldn't just say buying season peak really selling season if anything peak real estate season let's just call it that the point being we we saw a little bit of a tail off in April and I always warn people with when we're looking at these stats we don't want to to draw too many insane conclusions from them we we you know some people are going to look at these and I'll tell you right now some people will look at these and based on some anecdotal data as well combined with these stats they'll say oh the Market's crashing I we need to temper anything that we any conclusions that we come to based on these stats the month of April was down that's the first down month since October is normal for closed sales to go down in October and it's normal for them to go down in April in comparison to the month before but the fact that it is down year onye for the month of April that's something that we need to track a little bit that could be indicative that we're seeing again just slight tapering of demand maybe more than slight but it it does look like we're seeing tapering of demand what what was really interesting to me I did not expect to see this but the days on Market until sale which is the average number of days between when a property is listed and when an offer is accepted in a given month that number was really really low for the month of April so we had seen this number kind of it looked like it was maybe stabilizing in January February March where it had kind of gone back into the 30s and you know traditionally if this number would be in the 40s or 50s like in a normal even a normal sellers Market it would normally be in the 40s or 50s because you normally don't have a home again you're we're looking at the entire average of the market right so this number is being dragged down or or up depending on whether homes are going under contract right away or whether home some homes are sitting for a long time the homes that are sitting for a long time are causing the number to go up the homes that are going under contract right away cause the number to go down all that to be said that number was down 41% year onye in April 2021 we were looking at 39 days on Market until sale April of this year 23 days so that's a a very very low number that's close to to the lowest that it's ever been which was last year of let's see here what was the lowest July August and October of last year all were 21 days and so we're we're close to the lowest that we're seeing then so even though you know anecdotally I have seen this a lot of others have seen it some price changes some price decreases more so than we have traditionally seen the past year and a half but Market wide we are still seeing a very low number of days on market for all of these properties median sales price all right this is a major indicator right because if we're seeing any kind of a cool down that's going to be reflected in the median sales price and it's not reflected yet okay I do think it will be I I I I strongly believe that we will see a decrease in the median sales price in upcoming months it might take us until maybe it will be July I I think it might be sooner than that we again it's a very fluid situation but the median sales price and we look at median versus average because median is a more accurate indicator of where the market is but the median sales price was up 19.7% year on-ear we are now at a $298,000 median sales price for Greenville basically 300,000 is now what your average home cost that is up from $249,000 a year ago so we have gone from the average home costing $250,000 in April of last year to now it cost $300,000 in April of this year and the averages if if you care about the average price which the average price is just we don't look at it much because it's skewed by by very expensive properties if you have a few million dooll properties that sell in a market where the average is in the 300s that's you know that doesn't really tell you what's really happening but if you're interested the average was up 15.1% year on-year which is also honestly a pretty high number even by the past year standards it went from 306 36,000 a year ago to now 352,000 this year but for for my purposes I consider the median to be more indicative of what is actually the true average price in our Market 298,000 right now out of all of these numbers the number that jumped off the page to me the most was this one the percent of list price received so now this is I'm just going to read it again these are the greater Greenville Association of Realtors stats this is the percentage found when dividing a property sales price by its most recent list price and that's a key word most recent list price so this does not take into account the original list price this can be after price reduction so that's an important caveat then taking the average for all property sold in a given month not accounting for sell concession that's an also that's also an important detail it does not account for the fact whether sellers are paying closing costs or not that all that being said looking at this historically maybe looking at it in a nutshell it you can't draw major conclusions but looking at it historically you can and historically we are up 1.4% year on-ear which is here's why that's really important right because that's actually lower than than last month March was up 1.7% year- on-ear but April of last year was the first month that we hit 100% in other words the average sale was 100% the average closed sale was 100% of what the property was listed well now even you you would expect you know you can't get much higher than 100% right well we have been you know every month pretty much except October of the past year has been over 100% but April of 2022 April of this year was 10.4% in other words the average seller was getting 1.4% more than what they had listed the home for and that's the highest ever that is the highest we ever have in recorded history in the greater Greenville area area of South Carolina so I I I suspect that that number is going to go down but right now listen for the month of March if you were selling you know in in March April generally speaking you did very well from the standpoint of of how much that you got for your house when you listed it expect that number to taper off because of some of these other indicators that we talked about but man I that number really jumped off the page to me inventory inventory is another major indicator that we look at this really is a huge way that we assess the market and we've been hovering around the low one month around one month of inventory now for a while basically December was 1.1 months of inventory January 1 month February 1 month March 1.1 months so we' basically been at one month of inventory uh for the last several months this is one of the stats that for the month of April is not going to be accurate so I'm not going to say exactly I I don't know exactly what the number is but I will say this it came in at 1.7 now the number that number is going to go down because like I said said this number is pegged to the pending sales which are are always inaccurate every month for for the the most recent month that these stats are looking at but I honestly I expected that number to be higher than 1.7 because usually usually you have to like subtract half a percentage point or more in order to get what it's actually going to be once they revise these numbers the next month so April of 2022 I I think it's going to once they redact this next month I think it's going to end up being right around that one 1.1 1.2 months inventory range which is which is surprising we're we're we we need to at some point some of these indicators are going to have to start reflecting that actually inventory is increasing because if not what we're going to see is the worst case scenario what we're going to see is both supply and demand go down that that's the worst case scenario right well for me as a realtor it is because what that means is that there's just going to be fewer closings fewer people buying fewer people selling whereas you know for the past couple of years we've had fewer people selling but a lot more people buying but unfortunately this is the the climate that we're in and this may very well be what happens with what's going on with mortgage rates and all of that so overall I think that we are going to see things slow down a little bit all you know I had an episode a few weeks ago where I I talked about the spring busy season and kind of what I thought and several of the things that I said on there immediately happened immediately started happening and one of those things that immediately started happening that I noticed is that people are getting caught off guard by the fact that it's not the same Market that it was you know six months ago it is still as all of these metrics indicate still very much a sellers Market but the people that were you know overpricing their homes by 25 or $30,000 and still getting some people kicking tires on them maybe getting an offer that would then fall through due to a low appraisal or whatever the case may be those people now because there are more homes on the market are just not getting interest in those houses and so what's happening is those prices on those overpriced homes are starting to drop I'm hearing some people saying oh you know wow this Market is Shifting like crazy because of the fact that the they're seeing more price decreases I I would again temper expectations or or temper your interpretation of that data because to me as I said several weeks ago that's just people misreading the market misunderstanding how to price at home you don't in a market like this is not a good idea it's still not a good idea to overprice your home it's never a good idea when you're listing your home to overprice it but but in this market it it's it's really bad because people are more skeptical than ever when that house sits for a week or two it used to be that if a house sat for a week or two you could still get pretty close to if not a full price offer on the house the way things are now if a house sits there for a week or two it can be a situation particularly if a lot more homes come come on the market it could be a situation where that home just ends up you know getting substantially less than what it's listed for and and we're seeing that reflected in people that are misreading the market and are having to then go in and decrease their prices that's a that's a really bad idea that's something that when I have a seller client I I try to discuss with them okay here's the range here's the range that I think your home is is worth but obviously there's a lot of variability within that range but I don't want to go over the range right if if I say the house is worth 350 to $375,000 I don't want to list it for 380 and that's not self-serving that's because if you do that and then you start dropping your price you may end up getting less than what the house is worth that I I've done a podcast on that in the past people that end up doing that and overpricing their home they end up selling their home for less than they would have if they had just priced it normally I did an episode on this I believe it was last year and so you definitely don't want to do that you will end up losing out if you do that a lot of people are going to be doing that here in the upcoming months as they misunderstand what market dynamics are at play here so if you have any questions about that if you're looking to sell your home whatever the case may be or if you're looking to buy I am a realtor as I already said I am here in the greater Greenville area I would be happy to talk to you about that my contact information is in the show notes if you need to reach out to me for any reason please rate review subscribe to the show and I'll talk to you guys again next week [Music]